painting & motherhood

KonMari: Round Two

My organizing project is underway! It’s been good, but also a little intimidating. Marie is intense in her book and sometimes I’m too overwhelmed to even start a category or subcategory on her list! But I have tried to move along as fast as nap times allow me, and I can’t get discouraged! Plus being sick last weekend, it was hard to get up the gumption to purge!

So if you are also tackling your house- keep going! My goal is to get through everything on the list in six months- it’s possible. And I’m determined! About every other week or every three weeks I will give you a little update on how it’s been going and what it feels like!

In order to finish the first category – clothing – I only had to finish up my closet and then tackle my jewelry. I already dove into my dresser drawers and hanging clothes, so the top part of my closet was last. And it wasn’t a drastic change, only a few pieces to give away, the rest just needed to be stored more effectively.

The before is messsssssy. The top shelf is full of my purses and bags- pool bag, IKEA blue bag you can use for everything, and purses/wristlets. But I couldn’t find any purses or bags easily because of the mess!

The bottom shelf are my pants – jeans, green khakis, etc – , oversized sweaters, paint clothes, and off-season pants. A lot of the off season clothes are behind the pants I use everyday, so it’s effective for me!

I took everything out and made sure to donate or give away anything I wasn’t wearing or using. Then I put the few purses and bags I wanted to keep inside of one another so it was easier to know where things were.

Then it was on to my jewelry! I had long necklaces that I hadn’t touched since Jude was born, dangling earrings there is no way I would wear any time soon with a toddler around, and old bangle bracelets from high school. It was time to purge! Here are the before pictures. Remember, I haven’t been making my before pictures pretty at all. This is the real deal!

Those are the three areas I needed to work with: hanging necklaces, earring tree, and jewelry box. Once I emptied all areas, I realized how many pieces I wasn’t actually wearing, and honestly forgot I even had!

These are the during and after pictures! I emptied all three jewelry locations; frame, jewelry box, and earring tree. And the only thing that is still needed is the jewelry box. The other hanging items I just wasn’t wearing, were broken, or just really old. So it was good to get rid of those and just have things in my box that I actually wear.

So here are the before of our dresser. Matt and I share the dresser, and we both left it a little messy lately. It’s an easy spot to drop stuff! But maybe with less stuff, we won’t have a mess. Let’s hope this purging will help with the mess accumulating again.

And now the after! With the jewelry tree emptied, the things on my dresser top put away where they should go, here is the after. Much better!

Luckily I had a clothing exchange with some girlfriends right after I went through my clothes and jewelry, so I was able to bring it all there and other people found new life to my things I wasn’t using!

I’ve been looking around my bedroom and realizing how much I like not seeing all that jewelry that I was never wearing. It’s refreshing and I feel lighter! So that’s a good encouraging sign that this process is working and I’m feeling the good effects. Now I’m just a little nervous about jumping into the next categories. Paper, books, craft supplies…. I have a lot of work to do!

Yes! Clothing exchanges are wonderful! Everyone brings clothes that are in good condition but are bored of, and you organize them by tops, bottoms, accessories, etc. Everyone brings 20-30 clothes pins with their name written on it. You take about 15-20 minutes and everyone “shops” and clips any piece of clothing they like. At the end of the round, if you’re the only one that pinned it- it’s yours! If there are several pins on the same item, they all try it on and decide amongst themselves who should get it. But we always keep it friendly! Let me know if you have any other questions. It’s a fun way to shop for clothes without spending any money.